A First Love and A Clinic Patient
by still.looking
Summary: Thirteen gets mad at Kutner, and he finds out what hardships she's been through. Original characters included. My first story! KutnerXThirteen. I guess this rates as K


**A/N**: First time posting a story! Please read and review and tell me what I did wrong 'cause I know I did do something wrong. BTW I really didn't give an answer to the medical case.

**Disclaimer: I do not own House!**

* * *

Taub glanced anxiously at Thirteen, then at Kutner. There was a stony silence, awkward and biting, as Kutner stirred coffee quietly.

Foreman, who was reviewing some clinic files, looked up and rolled his eyes, and Taub knew he was going to say, "You idiot, Kutner, say sorry already." But at that precise moment, House entered the room, closely followed by Cuddy, saving Taub the necessity to shush Foreman.

He only half-listened to Cuddy, who was trying to persuade House into taking another case. Taub sighed.

Thirteen and Kutner's disagreement had started yesterday. House had turned down all the cases offered him, none of them interesting enough to keep him reading more than the patient's name. They knew better than to persuade him, so the three of them went to help out in the clinic.

Thirteen was treating a good-natured gentleman around her own age. Taub didn't know exactly what happened, but he did see Thirteen go out of the exam room, Kutner enter then Thirteen go back in. Five minutes later, the patient went out of the room. Then barely five seconds after the patient had disappeared out the front doors, Thirteen bolted out of the exam room and headed straight for the girls' bathroom.

Kutner emerged from the exam room, looking angry at himself.

"Hey, what just happened?" Taub had asked him as Kutner returned the clinic file.

"Nothing."

Kutner picked another file and started to turn away, but Taub held him fast. "Kutner, come on."

He avoided Taub's eyes. "I… I pranked her in front of the clinic patient." He closed his eyes, scolding himself. " I went overboard."

"Did you mean it?"

"No, of course not." Kutner was speaking a bit too quickly for Taub to understand. "I just want her to know I didn't mean it."

Before Taub could press him more, he'd turned away and entered a different exam room.

So they ended up here, today.

Cuddy and House didn't know they had fought, though, so the four of them—Thirteen, Kutner, Foreman, and Taub—listened to their almost-daily battle. The ice in the air would have been unnoticeable, but nothing is ever ignored when House is around.

"Who killed who?" House asked them suddenly, reverting sharply from a discussion of the patient's unexplained failing kidneys.

Foreman and Taub glanced at each other. Thirteen looked away sharply from Kutner, who looked apologetically at House.

"Huh. Now, to resolve this—"

House was cut off by Cuddy. "Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you, the patient I was talking about?"

"I don't care."

"He was the leader of a crime syndicate until six months ago."

These words had a great impact on House. "Failing kidneys, huh…" His natural curiosity and his ego were battling each other fiercely.

"What else?"

* * *

Two biopsies, a blood culture, an MRI, a CAT scan, and an EEG later, they still had no clues. The syndicate leader was getting worse: two seizures in the past 36 hours, and just three minutes ago he might have gone into a coma had Kutner not shook her in time.

"His stats are stabilizing again, unless, of course, he gets a seizure again." Foreman slammed down the file on the table, and looked up at the whiteboard. House had written the symptoms, and KIDNEYS on about half of it, over and over, writing with his left instead of his right hand.

"We're missing something."

"Where…" Kutner, who seemed to want to save Thirteen the trouble of ignoring him, always sat in House's chair in his office whenever they were in the differential room, and would just call out loudly when he had an idea. But the room was dead quiet, so they heard Kutner's murmur even from afar.

Now, Kutner was musing over how much Thirteen had avoided him in this case. Not only him, actually… she seemed to want to avoid the patient as much as possible too.

House tapped the whiteboard with his cane. "Not the MRI, CAT, the EEG…" Thirteen heard the seriousness in his voice, the same concentration that always came before one of his famous epiphanies.

"Taub and Foreman, run another blood count," he said quietly, and Kutner felt a premonition as they rose immediately. "Thirteen and Kutner, go search the home. Anything you can find will be relevant._ A-a-ah_!" He shushed Thirteen as she started to protest. He raised his voice so Kutner could hear him too. "Don't go back home without making up; Daddy will be angry. Be nice, Kutner."

* * *

Kutner put down the blue bag on a sofa in their patient's living room. The place was humble and quiet: not what you'd expect from the leader of a crime syndicate. The lock had been so easy to pick too. House hadn't bothered to help them out by taking the house keys.

"I'll take the bathroom," Thirteen muttered, grabbing a few sample bags and ignoring his eyes.

Kutner gave her a half-minute's head start and went for the kitchen, for the sole reason that it was the nearest room to the bathroom.

A few minutes passed awkwardly as Kutner bagged a few sick-looking bonsais on the windowsill.

"You do know House wants us to make up, right?"

Kutner was surprised. He was still thinking of a decent conversation opener, one that couldn't make her blood boil.

"Hey, I didn't mean to—"

"—call me a lesbian in front of my old school crush? Aww, sure, Kutner."

Her sarcasm hurt him deeply, a knife straight to his heart.

"Thirteen." He cleared his throat apologetically. He'd wanted it to sound serious, but it came out hoarse. "Thirteen."

No answer. Thirteen rustled aside some medicine bottles.

"Look, I'm sorry." Kutner's jet black hair appeared in the door. Thirteen could see him pouting slightly, and she almost forgave him right then and there. "I didn't know you knew him. I didn't know you still liked him."

"Neither did I," Thirteen whispered before she could hold it back.

Kutner raised his eyebrows. "You didn't know you like him? That's stupid."

"It's not nice to call someone stupid when you're still asking for their forgiveness, you know."

"I'm sorry." Kutner looked so repentant that Thirteen went into the whole story at once, unable to stop.

"I once treated him like an older brother. After he went away, that was when I realized I loved him. Only to find out six months later that he liked my best friend, who liked his best friend, who liked her back. He looked around for a friend again, then he found my other best friend, who was a guy. Jon—that was my guy best friend—would always tell me his stories, without him knowing." She looked up at him, crying. "So many things happened in between, but those are.. the major details.

"It wasn't another small cute school crush."

"I know."

Silence.

"How are all those people now? Your little love square?" Kutner couldn't resist asking, though he knew it was rude.

"I don't know." Thirteen pulled out another swab. "Yesterday… he, uh… told me—"

"That he loved you. I know. I heard. That's why I entered in the first place."

"You entered 'cause you heard him say that?"

"Word for word—'I still remember you. I'm still terribly sorry.' Then a long pause… 'I love you'. Slick, actually, but I thought he'd hurt you before, so—"

"You memorized—?"

"Hey, it's not my fault I have a memory like this."

Thirteen sighed. "_Memories, supposed to fade, what's wrong with my heart_?"

"_Shake it off, let it go, didn't think it'd be this hard. Should be strong moving on…_"

"I want to forget. I can't."

"Maybe you just need someone to help you." Kutner ran his finger along a bathroom tile.

Thirteen wiped away her tears. "I guess."

Kutner looked up, the picture of pitying innocence. She was severely tempted to lean forward and kiss his cheek. But it was then that Kutner heard the sound of footsteps on the front porch.

* * *

Next second, the door he had left unlocked swung open to reveal a middle-aged woman holding a casserole.

Kutner put a finger to his lips, motioning for Thirteen to keep quiet. She nodded, looking tense, but still crying quietly.

He looked at her again, then she suddenly started crying into his chest.

"Bar, I have your casserole," a high-pitched voice said. Kutner often associated that kind of voice with gossipers, and it was usually right. _Oh, great_, he thought. _The last thing I'd need now is a snoop._

The footsteps were coming closer, because a casserole obviously belonged in the kitchen. She put down the casserole on the table with a clink of metal against glass. He thought she was going to leave, but no footsteps sounded. He heard her muttering.

"Leading a gang of killers one day, living an honest life the next. I don't believe it." Her steps were sounding nearer. "I guess it wouldn't hurt to have a poke around.. he's leaving the house open, so I have an excuse…" She cackled.

Cupboard doors were opened, then closed, all the time louder.

Kutner was pressed against the wall beside the door, thinking furiously. He was still muffling a crying Thirteen. Thirteen pressed closer to Kutner, sorry that she couldn't do anything. She felt his heart beating erratically under her hand, then looked up at him to see that he was blushing. (Well, it looked like that, with his dark skin and all.) How could he blush at a time like this?

The muttering voice was practically an inch from them.

A dog barked somewhere in the house. Small footsteps pattered into the kitchen.

"Oh, hi, James!" Apparently this dog was a normal stay, but the old lady still sounded nervous at having been discovered. "Wh-where's your master?"

How stupid, thought Kutner.

He was wrong on that. The dog was actually a Rottweiler, taught to deal with people.

This woman was not a stranger to James, its early days having been spent messing up her garden. So the dog barked toward the door, meaning its master went out.

"I-I see!"

The woman may be familiar, but the house's security was still threatened, with the widely opened door. The black dog glanced again longingly at it, unsure what to do. She caught that.

"I guess I'll be going now, then," she said shakily.

Kutner heard her footsteps fade away, then a sudden thought struck him. How come the dog didn't respond to their scent? Such a protective dog would have noticed.

He released Thirteen as soon as he was sure they were alone with the dog. He looked around the door to see the two-foot dog bark happily at him, wagging its tail. He stared at it, then at Thirteen.

"He knows you," Kutner said, sure of it. "More importantly, you know the patient. You've been here before."

Thirteen wiped her eyes. "Explain, my Sherlock."

Kutner ignored the possessive pronoun. "You knew where to find the bathroom. You've been avoiding the patient. This dog didn't bark at us, either. He knows you—your scent. He didn't smell me—well, 'cause I was holding you." He blushed a bit at that, remembering. "Who was the patient to you? Why do you know this house?"

Thirteen came out of the bathroom, and the dog barked excitedly and trotted over to her. "Good to see you, James!"

James turned and looked at Kutner, because he almost had the same scent as her. James wagged his tail and growled playfully.

"Who was the patient to you?"

Thirteen made the dog sit, play dead, and roll over. "The father of my clinic patient."

* * *

Wave after wave of realization crashed over Kutner.

"That clinic patient…"

"Had heard that his father crashed in the baby shower he'd attended, that he was being taken to Princeton Plainsboro, and had taken off two minutes after that call. In his haste, he had accidentally cut his arm on the sharp edge of a signpost, so he came into the clinic."

"He knew you. Then when he asked you about his father, you answered he wasn't here, because he wasn't, and the guy only checked in a day later because his papers were taking so long to process because he was a criminal." Kutner slapped his forehead. "Why does the dog know you, then?"

"I gave it to him. He loved animals, so I got it as a birthday present for him last year. Before that, though, I trained him in the basics."

"He did like you. He kept the dog."

"With his father? Right. He lives somewhere else."

"How are you now?" Kutner asked carefully.

"Fine," Thirteen said. "I don't like him anymore. I've decided."

"Why?"

Thirteen looked at him. He looked honestly curious. "I told myself before that I wouldn't stop loving him until I found someone better."

Kutner looked strangely at her. "Did you? Who?"

"The biggest idiot I have ever known."

"WHAT?! YOU FELL IN LOVE WITH HOUSE?!!"

Thirteen smacked him hard on the shoulder, laughing. "Hell no, duh."

Kutner smiled sadly, looking at her as she packed his bonsais into the bag. "Do you forgive me?"

"Yes. I'm over him anyway."

Kutner scoffed. "He's not over you," he muttered.

She avoided his eyes. "Hey, do you know who Irene Adler is?"

"Uh… no."

She grinned. "Okay."

* * *

**How was it? *nervous* Please tell me so I can make my next ones better. BTW I do not own David Archuleta's A Little Too Not Over You.  
**


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